Stem and leaf plots

Stem and leaf plots

Lessons

A Stem and Leaf Plot is a good way to represent data. The data is split into a “stem” which represents the first digit, and a “leaf” which represents the last digit.

1.

What are Stem and Leaf Plots?

2.

Interpreting a Stem and Leaf Plot
A Stem and Leaf Plot representing the ages of people being immunized against a certain infection.

Stem:

Leaf:

0

145579

1

345569

2

001358

Write out a list of all the numerical data

3.

Sandra’s class brought all their animals into school one day. The weight of each animal was measured and then displayed in the following Stem and Leaf Plot:

Weight of Animal in Pounds

Stem:

Leaf:

0

1146778

1

0135

2

258

a)

What was the combined weight of every single animal that was taken into school that day?

b)

What was the range of animal weights?

4.

Creating a Stem and Leaf Plot
A 100m swimming race took place and the time it took the competing swimmers to finish was recorded:

8.7 seconds

8.5 seconds

9.3 seconds

10.2 seconds

9.5 seconds

9.8 seconds

10.0 seconds

8.1 seconds

8.7 seconds

9.3 seconds

9.0 seconds

10.5 seconds

9.8 seconds

10.2 seconds

8.9 seconds

9.4 seconds

a)

Create a stem and leaf plot

b)

Sometimes when we have too much data lumped into a category we like to split each stem into two or more categories. This sometimes makes the data more nicely represented. For the above question split each stem into two equal parts.

5.

Back-to-back Stem and Leaf Plot
It is often useful to consider two data sets to each other. A “Back-to-Back Stem and Leaf Plot” is a good way of handily comparing two distributions.
Meghan’s basketball team has played two seasons so far. The amount of points her team scored in each game is given in the following back-to-back stem and leaf plot:

Amount of Points Scored

1st Season

2nd Season

467

7

88

017

8

369

38

9

47

05

10

1478

List the amount of points her team scored for all their games for each season.